A friend of my wife had 23 aunts and uncles. Her mother has 11 siblings, her father 12. She called her mothers siblings momlings and her fathers siblings as poplings. These terms were used throughout the family. Also, with so many cousins, they referred themselves as couslings instead of cousins. With the family spreading out over the years, these terms are now not used much anymore.
I’m certainly not going to say that it wasn’t used that way in your circles - but in general, although the words have multiple meanings* , they aren’t catch-all words for anyone of a previous generation and are often used for someone of the same generation.
“Comare” and “compare” often mean “godmother” and 'godfather" ( both the religious and Mafia type) in Southern Italian. Sometimes this extends to the godparents of your children or the parents of your godchildren. “Compare” also means a close male friend although I’ve never heard “comare” used to refer to a close female friend. I’ve also heard them used to refer to the maid of honor/best man in a wedding, although that may have been an example of “close friend”. And “comare” can mean mistress, although that might be an Italian-American usage.
cummari (Sicilian for comare) certainly can just mean “close [female] friend.”
Yeah, to be fair, my dad’s hometown was an odd little enclave.
Okay. I misunderstood your original post. You were talking about the word “sibling”. I interpreted you as saying there was no word for “brother” or “sister” as in “male child of same mother” or “female child of same mother”. The gender-neutral “sibling” is new. Got it.
Ah, that makes more sense. I was wondering why you thought it so incredibly obvious there must have been a word for it.